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Chapter 13. November
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Monday’s Not Coming, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Child Abuse
Family, Community, and Responsibility
Growing Up, Independence, and Friendship
Secrecy and Shame
Poverty, Social Support, and Desperation
Memory, Repression, and Trauma
Summary
Analysis
If God is listening to Claudia’s prayers, he’d make sure her grades get lost in the mail and keep her parents from discovering she’s failing everything but biology. Everything will go back to normal once Claudia finds Monday, but she needs help now, so she seeks out Ms. Valente.
Claudia feels that finding Monday would solve everything that’s going wrong in her life. This underlines just how much Claudia relied on Monday to get through the school day, as it seems her grades are slipping exclusively because Monday can’t help her anymore.
Themes
Ms. Valente offers Claudia half her sandwich and, after a few minutes of stilted conversation about school, Ms. Valente asks what’s wrong. Claudia asks if she ever found out any info about Monday. Ms. Valente is surprised that Monday is still missing. She drops her sandwich and leads Claudia to the office.
When Ms. Valente acts surprised about Monday’s absence, it suggests that there’s a major disconnect between the different parties trying to track down Monday. But the fact that Ms. Valente goes back to the office suggests that bureaucracy may prevent her from effectively being able to follow up on Monday.
Themes
At the office, Ms. Valente asks Ms. Clark about Monday. Ms. Clark shares that the phone is out of service, but a social worker asked CFSA to follow up. Ms. Valente notes that that happened weeks ago. Claudia asks what CFSA is, and Ms. Valente says it stands for Child and Family Services Agency. Ms. Clark says the social worker is having a personal emergency, so it’ll be a bit before they can check in.
Ms. Clark’s excuses for the social worker show that the social workers might not be taking Monday’s case as seriously as they could be. As far as Claudia’s concerned, Monday needs to be checked on now—not when the social worker is back from their emergency. This passage also emphasizes that Monday isn’t a priority to CFSA.
Themes
Ms. Valente leads Claudia back to the classroom. Claudia asks why Monday has a social worker, and Ms. Valente says that some families need extra help. She says this is probably a case of missed emails, and there’s no reason to worry. Claudia tries to keep her imagination in check, but when she thinks of social workers, she thinks of child abuse. Monday would’ve told Claudia if she was being abused—right?
Ms. Valente acknowledges outright that bureaucracy can make it difficult to get kids the help they need. Learning that Monday has a social worker transforms Claudia’s thinking and makes the possibility that Monday is in real trouble seem even more likely. But again, Claudia trusts Monday so fully, it’s almost inconceivable to think that Monday wouldn’t have told her about any abuse.
Themes
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